Strategic Acquisitions – How? and What?

All organizations try to achieve the maximum growth in the shortest possible time. The trajectory that they want to take depends on what strategies they adopt to manage the varied challenges that they will face. There are many strategies that can be deployed in the wake of time-lines based growth targets. Its almost a undeniable fact that we have growth targets breathing down on CEO’s and the Board in all organizations and the route that they decide to take spells either the knell or the trumpet.

To swell any organizations revenue the strategy and the impending road-map is key; growth can be achieved by multiple ways. Defining a strategy and the under lying mesh of a plan is a hard job and usually the CSO – the strategist does that; he has to further that his conviction to persuade the brass of the organization. Lets take a look at the varied examples of growth strategies that have been successfully used on most occasions to improve the swell of revenues.

With Nortel filing for bankruptcy and the entire global telecom community completely aware of the ‘cash cows’ of a customer base with Nortel. Avaya’s acquisition of Nortel ensured it roped in the top enterprises where it can up-sell / cross sell and also the key Large Systems piece that had many fans in the enterprise world. With Nortel’s strong presence in NA, Avaya could get a rapid entry there with its newer range of products targeting the UC opportunities with Aura and other range of newer products.

With all the CRM systems loosing out to minnows of smaller organizations thanks to the capability of Social Media analytics that these start ups have created. With Lithium’s intended acquisition of Scoutlabs and the market thirst for Social media analytics, Salesforce jumped into the bandwagon and identified and completed the acquisition of one of the market leaders in Social media analytics “Radian6”. Salesforce overnight added capability to penetrate a big chunk of the market and also provide new capabilities to its huge and delighted customer base.

Tata Motors acquisition of the British icons Jaguar and Land Rover was seen as an achievement; here Tata Motors without wasting much time and realizing the economic slowdown in European and American markets completed the acquisition rather swiftly. It provided Tata Motors opportunity to spread its business across different geographies and across different customer segments. Tata Motors did not hesitate to incur a huge capital expenditure in planning to invest US$ 1 billion in JLR in addition to the US$ 2.3 billion it had spent on the acquisition. Well Tata Motors now had global reach, varied market segments penetration, infrastructure, labs and technology.

JPMorgan Chase acquired Bear Stearns for $10 per share, a price far below the 52-week high of $133.20 per share. JPMorgan Chase made the last-minute buyout was aimed at averting a Bear Stearns bankruptcy and a spreading crisis of confidence in the global financial system. The Federal Reserve and the U.S. government swiftly approved the all-stock deal. As all could see JPMorgan benefited most in Bear Stearns’ prime brokerage business, which completes trades for big investors such as hedge funds. Bear Stearns collapse was spectacular just before the acquisition falling to 1% in 16 days.

Whats in a Acquisition?

Acquisition is an inorganic growth tool, many times this is the most sought after growth tool. There are many cases of pure failures in acquisitions thanks to the fine art that is required to compose a strategic integration. Acquisition tests the ability of most leaders who have little, or no expertise in shaping a joint market strategy and driving existing share holders commitments. Approaches abound and any failures in the estimated revenues are directly due to the lack of proper research and analysis over priorities and integration dynamics. In certain events acquisitions could have been avoided and strategic alliances could have been the key.

How to make an Acquisition work?

Before even the ideas over a target company are framed, even before the very first exchange of numbers happen, there has to be a business analysis done from the market perspective invoking the best of methodologies. The earliest of activity starts with getting the priorities of the organization correct; priorities cover non-negotiable stance of the acquirer. This list of priorities are essential to even start mapping the possible targets that would help in fulfilling the non-negotiable stance.

Secondly the acquirer organization needs to ‘listen and monitor’ the market having its scanner on the alert not to miss any available opportunity, there can be missed opportunities that emerge that would otherwise been a launchpad for growth. It would be wise of the board members or CEO’s to avoid compulsions which would emerge from almost everywhere.